Archive for the 'Walkability' Category

How an Atlanta Family Slashed its Carbon Footprint and Gained a Life

Published
by
Ryan Sharp
on May 13, 2008
in Climate Change, Commuting, Density, Sprawl, Transit and Walkability
. 5 Comments

The following article below is a reprint from NPR.org on April 1, 2008:

Atlanta Family Slashes Carbon Footprint

Atlanta resident Malaika Taylor used to live the typical suburban life — the kind that helps make America the world’s top contributor to climate change. But four years ago, fed up with commuting, Taylor and her 11-year old daughter, Maya, moved from the suburbs to the city.

And their “carbon footprint” shrank.

“There are some weekends when I don’t even use my car,” says Taylor.

The Taylors live in Atlantic Station, a new community in mid-town Atlanta designed to put jobs, homes and shopping all in one place, close to public transportation. Developments like Atlantic Station are springing up around the country, and proponents say they help cut car pollution, including the carbon dioxide that contributes to climate change.

Atlantic Station: A Climate Change Model

On a typical morning, Taylor walks her daughter to the bus stop and then keeps going 10 minutes to her job as a property manager at an apartment complex.

“I have to admit, if it’s raining or really cold, I drive,” she says.

Her mile-long commute is unusual in Atlanta, where the federal government estimates the average resident drives 32 miles each day. Early surveys show the people who live and work in Atlantic Station drive about a third that much, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

“We don’t often think of a development as a way to solve environmental problems. But this is really a unique example of kind of growing your way into better environmental quality,” says Geoff Anderson, who helped steer the Atlantic Station project through the regulatory process for the EPA. Anderson now heads Smart Growth America, an environmentally friendly development advocate.

At first, the EPA supported Atlantic Station as a way to help Atlanta fight its unhealthy smog problem. Anderson says now the agency sees the community as a model of how America can fight climate change.

“The two biggest things we do from a carbon perspective are, we heat our houses or cool them, or we drive. And when you combine that, that’s going to add up to a big chunk of your personal carbon footprint,” Anderson says.

A Smaller Impact

Reducing her carbon footprint was not Taylor’s intent when she moved. She just wanted her life back.

But living in the city has cut the small family’s impact on global warming to about half the national average for a family of two.

When they lived in the suburbs, Taylor filled up her gas tank three or four times every two weeks. Now she fills up once in two weeks.

Her other energy bills shrank, too.

In the winter, her gas bill to heat her suburban house was almost $200. Now she uses electricity to heat and cool their compact, two-bedroom loft. That bill tops out around $80, about 20 percent less than the average bill for an Atlanta household.

Apartments often have lower energy costs because of shared walls and smaller spaces. Americans send more than 1 trillion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the air, or about a fifth of the nation’s total emissions. If lots of Americans lived like the Taylors, then the nation’s greenhouse-gas pollution could drop by hundreds of millions of tons.

Of course, the move didn’t come without tradeoffs.

“I can’t afford to buy a house in the city. It took me four garage sales to get rid of enough stuff to fit into my apartment. I thought I purged, and it still wasn’t enough, and I had to purge again,” says Taylor.

Gaining a Life

On one recent rainy afternoon, Taylor drives to pick up Maya at the bus stop. It takes them almost no time and hardly any gas or greenhouse gas emissions.

What’s more, when it’s time to take a trip to the grocery store, it takes only two minutes to get there, and she’s is back home within 15 minutes.

“That’s hands down one of the biggest perks about living here. The convenience, convenience, convenience,” Taylor says.

It’s only 4:20 p.m. Maya has already made a big dent in her homework. And Malaika has a few hours to kill.

“Maybe I’ll work out. Maybe we’ll play a game. It makes a huge difference just in the quality of our life,” Taylor says. “We get to spend a lot more time together. I think she’s happier. I’m happier. It makes life a lot better.”

Image: Flickr

Churches Cater To Cars

Published
by
JM Palacios
on March 23, 2008
in Cars, Pedestrians, Walkability, biking, bus, church and drive-thru
. 2 Comments

Imagine a drive-thru church? It’s not far from reality. Last Christmas, I heard of a church that was having a drive-thru nativity scene. The ostensible reason was that people didn’t have to get out of their cars in cold weather. Some churches, however, like this one in Orlando, do it when they don’t have cold weather. One of the main purposes of a church is fellowship, and it’s easy with a crowd of people in a building. It’s rather difficult, on the other hand, to carry on a conversation with someone in another car.

While I came close to riding my bike to my church’s sunrise service today at the beach, churches in Ohio and Virginia offered drive-thru Easter pageants. It should come as no surprise, since they only reflect our greater car-centric culture—but it’s still frustrating. Why can’t churches be more pedestrian friendly?

One church in Texas has walk-thru scenes of Stations of the Cross on permanent display. Has anyone seen similar walkable displays or pageants, or have you seen any local churches touting drive-thru dramas? Please voice your thoughts. We want to see examples, whether good, bad, or ugly.

Also, any thoughts for improvements? I would like to see a bus shelter and a bike rack in front of my church. What about your neighborhood churches?

The Biscayne Wall Blunder

Published
by
Gabriel Lopez-Bernal
on March 18, 2008
in 900 Biscayne, Bad Ideas, Biscayne Boulevard, Biscayne Wall, Downtown, Marina Blue, Marquis, Metromover, NE 2nd Avenue, New Urbanism, Ten Museum Park, Urban Design and Walkability
. 7 Comments
Speaking of curb cuts, I was passing along NE 2nd Avenue and was completely disgusted to experience firsthand the atrocities permitted to occur on the backside of the buildings facing Biscayne Bay. The term Biscayne wall is quite fitting as the backsides of these towers were clearly designed to resemble the blank slate of a concrete wall, keeping pedestrians well away. The worst part of all, as we’ve discussed before, is the lack of adequate transit integration and pedestrian facilities along this route. The blank backsides will almost ensure that any use of metromover by building residents is inhibited by vehicular needs. The parking entrances of these buildings should have been relegated to the minor cross streets (NE 11, 10, 9, etc.) instead of the major thoroughfare with DIRECT rail transit access. Even worse is the street activity. Aside from an existing pawn shop, the only street activity these buildings will be seeing is parking garage access… From now own, we’re calling this the Biscayne Blunder…

I figured Chopin’s Funeral March would fit this slide well because this street is good as dead Dead…

Stop Sign of Death?

Published
by
Rob Jordan
on March 9, 2008
in Intersections, Meridian, Miami Beach, Pedestrians, Police, Public Works, Urban Design, Walkability and Walking
. 12 Comments
I live next to a busy intersection in South Beach - Meridian Avenue and 13th Street. It’s the main entryway to Flamingo Park as well as the beach’s central avenue. It’s the only tree-shaded roadway around. Suffice to say, there’s a lot of traffic: cars, bikes and pedestrians.

Within the past few months, four-way stop signs went up at the intersection, making it significantly safer, or so I thought. One of the stop signs is all but hidden behind a tree. Cars blow past it all the time. This is doubly dangerous considering pedestrians now assume cars will stop at the intersection. There are people pushing baby strollers to the park, little kids going to shoot hoops, people walking their dogs.

I emailed the city to point out the problem. There had been small temporary stop signs in the middle of the road until recently, and I suggested they do something similar on a permanent basis or at least make the hidden stop sign more visible. Never heard back.

Walking home one night, I came across two Miami Beach motorcycle cops. They were there to run down cars that rolled through the stop sign. I told them people couldn’t see the sign, but they argued there is a warning sign farther back (small red octagon with arrow) and nothing that could be done. When I emphasized the inherent danger, one of the cops said pedestrians should be “alert” anyway.

So, I’ve contacted the county’s public works department. They tell me they’ll check it out. In the meantime, I have a strong feeling someone is going to get hurt or killed. I hope I’m wrong.

The Grove’s Information Booths

Published
by
Gabriel Lopez-Bernal
on February 6, 2008
in Booths, Coconut Grove, Information Center, Marc Sarnoff, New Urbanism, Pedestrians, Public Safety, Tourism and Walkability
. 8 Comments

From the Miami Today:

EYES ON THE STREET: Small black kiosks are popping up around Coconut Grove as part of a City of Miami pilot initiative to have more “eyes on the street,” Commissioner Marc Sarnoff said. He proposed the idea in May, calling for increased enforcement officer presence. The booths are to serve as bases for police officers “most of the time,” he said, and sometimes for code-enforcement officers. During special events, they could also serve as information booths for visitors, he said. The city hopes to complete the booths before the Coconut Grove Arts Festival, which begins Feb. 16. “If this (pilot) works, we’re going to bring it up Biscayne Boulevard around the performing arts center,” as well as to the Upper East side and possibly Little Havana, Mr. Sarnoff said.

The CGG has a different view:

They look like prison guard stations or even worse, Gulag booths. Do they need to be black and do tourists really need an info booth? The Grove is three streets long. The best thing is to let the tourists wander around and go into stores and ask around for things. It will bring more business to stores this way and it makes it a friendlier place than to have a cold black info booth.

We here at Transit Miami like this new approach to keeping our streets safer. The booths will create a place for tourists to seek advice while keeping a vigilant eye on our higher pedestrian areas. They promote safety and tourism while encouraging people to walk about our most urban neighborhoods. I think we could use a few of these along Flagler, Brickell, and Little Havana. Your thoughts?

Leave a comment and let us know what you think on our poll in the left sidebar…

Thursday Quote: 20th Century Paradox

Published
by
Gabriel Lopez-Bernal
on January 10, 2008
in Joell Vanderwagen, Pedestrians, Transportation, Walkability and Walking
. 0 Comments
“The paradox of transportation in the late 20th Century is that while it became possible to travel to the moon, it also became impossible, in many cases, to walk across the street.”
- Joell Vanderwagen

The Anti Walk Score

Published
by
Gabriel Lopez-Bernal
on December 10, 2007
in Congestion, Drivability, Drive Score, Manhattan, Sprawl, Traffic, Vehicles, Walk Score and Walkability
. 8 Comments
First we brought you the incredibly useful Walk Score, a program geared to determining how navigable neighborhoods are for people…

Today I’d like to introduce Drive Score, the anti-walking, pro-sprawl, and guaranteed laziness application which uses incredibly flawed methods to create a map of vehicle accessible areas. One would think if you ranked poorly on Walk Score, you’d rank high on drive score, right? Not necessarily. Just for fun, I entered a highly walkable Manhattan address to see how “drivable” this program claims the city to be and came up with an 88! You know, never mind the bumper to bumper traffic, lack of dedicated parking, or any sane analysis, this program spews out pure gibberish…

Miami-Ft. Lauderale Ranks 8th in Walkability! Huh?

Published
by
Ryan Sharp
on December 5, 2007
in Brookings Institution, Miami, Pedestrians and Walkability
. 10 Comments

The good news is, a recently released Brookings Institution report claims that the number of walkable locales is growing in many metropolitan areas across the country. It’s great to see that people are rediscovering the kind of urbanism that allows high quality pedestrian environments to thrive.

However, the Brookings report itself has some major flaws. I know I’m going to sound like a major hater here, but somehow out of 30 metropolitan regions nationwide, the Miami-Ft Lauderdale-West Palm Beach metro ranked 8th place – above metros like New York and Philadelphia! For anyone who knows anything about cities and metropolitan regions, this should immediately raise a red flag.

So how is such a ranking possible, you ask? It comes down to Brookings’ flawed methodology for calculating walkable areas in each metro. Instead of calculating the percentage of area that is walkable in each metropolitan region, the Institution instead chose to go by arbitrary districts or neighborhoods, which vary considerably in size and functionality. For example, both Center City, Philadelphia and Coconut Grove, Miami were chosen as walkable locales within their respective metros. However, despite Center City being much, much larger than Coconut Grove, the two areas count the same.

In New York, which had the highest number of walkable locales at 21, it’s even more arbitrary. Districts that roughly correlate with popular Manhattan neighborhoods were chosen, leaving most of the rest of the city out of the report. This, in effect, is saying that Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx, home to dozens and dozens of the most walkable neighborhoods in North America, are less worthy than Dadeland or Sugarland Town Center in suburban Houston (that’s redundant, by the way). I’m sorry, but that is at best arbitrary and at worst completely inaccurate.

This is disappointing coming from Brookings, one of the most respected (and one of my favorite) think tanks that regularly deals with urban policy and smart growth principles. A much more accurate depiction of an area’s walkability would be to calculate the percentage of both the city and the metropolitan area that is walkable. This allows for a fair, one-to-one comparison between all cities and metropolitan regions regardless of size or population. If this had been used instead as apart of the report’s methodology, I’m sure that only a very small fraction of the Miami-Ft. Lauderdale-West Palm Beach metro would be considered walkable.

Alas, it is very encouraging to see walkability becoming more mainstream again. It’s amazing what happens when A) people become disenchanted with the soullessness of sprawl and B) quality urbanism is built instead. Believe it or not, this is what Miami 21 is all about – making the City of Miami more walkable and pedestrian-oriented. This is why it is critical that we support it, because even though it is not a perfect code, it is far, far better than anything in place right now. Furthermore, it gives us the only fighting chance at actually making Miami into a high quality, pedestrian-oriented city.